>The question is wrong -- it implies that there exists some sort of >essence of womanhood to be understood. There is not, any more than there >is an essence of "man" or of "humans" to be understood. > >Carrol > >VI. Feuerbach resolves the religious essence into the _human_ essence. >But the human essence is no abstraction inherent in each single >individual. In its reality it is the ensemble of the social relations. Carrol, I don't know whom you're quoting here (I guess I haven't been up on some thread or other), but there seems to be a logical problem built into this "VI" above. The idea of an abstract human essence seems simply to be transferred from an individual essence to an ensemble essence. This is just a beside-the-point aside. ==Dan Dan Pearlman's home page: http://pages.zdnet.com/danpearl/danpearlman/ My new fiction collection, THE BEST-KNOWN MAN IN THE WORLD AND OTHER MISFITS, may be ordered online at http://www.aardwolfpress.com/ "Perfectly-crafted gems": Jack Dann, Nebula & World Fantasy Award winner Director, Council for the Literature of the Fantastic: http://www.uri.edu/artsci/english/clf/ OFFICE: Department of English University of Rhode Island Kingston, RI 02881 Tel.: 401 874-4659 Fax: (253) 681-8518 email: [log in to unmask]